What Made you Smile/What Ticked you off Today?

[marurun]

Leaving in half an hour so I can see my boyfriend on Monday! I'm visiting my grandma first so that will be... interesting (she means well, but she's not that easy to deal with sometimes). Plus I'm always a nervous wreck when crossing the border, so that won't be fun... but still, I'm veeeeery excited.

IF you are crossing into the US, don't bring cash with you. American police departments make hundreds of thousands of dollars a year from seizing cash, under the rationale that if you're carrying cash, it's probably to buy drugs. Its costly and time-consuming to get it back, so most don't bother.

[KalessinDB]

Leaving in half an hour so I can see my boyfriend on Monday! I'm visiting my grandma first so that will be... interesting (she means well, but she's not that easy to deal with sometimes). Plus I'm always a nervous wreck when crossing the border, so that won't be fun... but still, I'm veeeeery excited.

IF you are crossing into the US, don't bring cash with you. American police departments make hundreds of thousands of dollars a year from seizing cash, under the rationale that if you're carrying cash, it's probably to buy drugs. Its costly and time-consuming to get it back, so most don't bother.

Citation Needed.

I've crossed the border probably a hundred times or more in my life, and never once been asked about cash on hand. I have several friends on the other side of the border who have made similar numbers of crossings and have never once mentioned something like that happening either.

[oxymoron]

- Got an acceptance letter from my safety school.

[dsheinem]

Leaving in half an hour so I can see my boyfriend on Monday! I'm visiting my grandma first so that will be... interesting (she means well, but she's not that easy to deal with sometimes). Plus I'm always a nervous wreck when crossing the border, so that won't be fun... but still, I'm veeeeery excited.

IF you are crossing into the US, don't bring cash with you. American police departments make hundreds of thousands of dollars a year from seizing cash, under the rationale that if you're carrying cash, it's probably to buy drugs. Its costly and time-consuming to get it back, so most don't bother.

Citation Needed.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/sf/invest ... w-who-won/

http://www.ij.org/policing-for-profit-t ... forfeiture

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2013/08/12/taken

http://jalopnik.com/5913416/cops-can-co ... g-citizens

[samsonlonghair]

: You know, I was hired by the Executive Director of my job to do all the graphic work because up until then they'd pretty much just been using clip art and arbitrarily throwing things together. I've spent quite a bit of time trying to make sure everything is cohesive, from the designs to the logo (and thus the branding), and looking as professional as possible.

So it really irks me when I spend a week putting something together based on the directions I've been given, only to have a cut and paste clip art/poor quality cobbled image placed upon my desk on the final day it needs to be turned in and pretty much told, "I found some of these on Google last night. Could you make it look just like this. And yeah, we need this by the end of the day. Thanks!"

To make it worse, of course their 'great design' idea doesn't work on the format and size required, so I spend most of my time trying to cram what they want into the small space they want it to be in. Which inevitably leads to the "It's kind of hard to read, can you do something about that?" And I kind of want to say, "Well, of course it's hard to read. It's 7pt font on a yellow and white checkered background. What the hell do you expect?" I don't, because I'm a professional like that, but the urge was there.

This isn't the first time this has happened (and I'm sure it won't be the last), but this is the first time it's looked so bad, and I had to break so many design rules to get it finished, that when it was done and they asked "It looks good right?" I couldn't bring myself to give some sort of unidentifiable nod and had to tell them "No." I think I shocked her when I did that. But when she asked what was wrong with it, the list in my head was so long and I knew that there wasn't enough time and it wouldn't matter anyway, that all I could do was just shake my head and email her the pdf file.

Sorry, had to get that off my chest.

I feel you, Michi. I have had a few terrible clients like that.

[darsparx]

- ff1 save pops up in save utility but not in ff1. Looks like until I can figure that out I won't be playing and I was kinda looking forward to it on the way to and from my sisters nutcracker recital.....something really doesn't want me to finish it because that's looking like another 10-12 hours down the drain maybe more.....

[Key-Glyph]

As for being on HRT, I could describe the first time I took it as what your health bar does when you collect enough fruit in a level of Yoshi's Story! XD

This analogy made me so happy. Tremendously glad to hear how well you and Queso have been feeling in general, and good luck with the holiday talks back home.

So it really irks me when I spend a week putting something together based on the directions I've been given, only to have a cut and paste clip art/poor quality cobbled image placed upon my desk...

Ugh, Michi, you have enough graphics talent to sink a ship. I'm sorry that your current employer can't make better use of that. At least your tree benefited from your artistic vision.

[marurun]

IF you are crossing into the US, don't bring cash with you. American police departments make hundreds of thousands of dollars a year from seizing cash, under the rationale that if you're carrying cash, it's probably to buy drugs. Its costly and time-consuming to get it back, so most don't bother.

Citation Needed.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/sf/invest ... w-who-won/

http://www.ij.org/policing-for-profit-t ... forfeiture

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2013/08/12/taken

http://jalopnik.com/5913416/cops-can-co ... g-citizens

I will add one from the CBC.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/american-s ... -1.2760736

Washington DC has just outlawed this practice, but it won't go into effect until 2017 since the police budgeted almost $600,000 to their operations that would come from this practice for 2016.

[KalessinDB]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/sf/invest ... w-who-won/

http://www.ij.org/policing-for-profit-t ... forfeiture

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2013/08/12/taken

http://jalopnik.com/5913416/cops-can-co ... g-citizens

Interesting, especially the 2nd post. Thank you. Wasn't trying to be a jerk, but in New York and Ontario, I have literally never come across someone who's made mention of this occurring, so I was sort of taken aback. With the current anti-police sentiments running rampant in the US media at the very least, it just seemed like more of that, but while Washington Post and New Yorker could be dismissed as anecdotal evidence trying to sell a story, the second link is very informative. Honestly, I'd expect nothing less from you Prof

Can't look at the 4th link, it's blocked here at work, but I'll be sure to check it out when I'm home.

[KalessinDB]

I will add one from the CBC.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/american-s ... -1.2760736

Washington DC has just outlawed this practice, but it won't go into effect until 2017 since the police budgeted almost $600,000 to their operations that would come from this practice for 2016.

I like this post, it gives me numbers to run!

They give a number of just shy of 62k cash seizures in the past 13 years "on roadways and elsewhere", meaning they may have nothing whatsoever to do with the border - or roughly 4,769 a year, assuming even distribution. It may not be even, but I have no way of knowing that and will work with the data I can find. This is way too many and I am not trying to deny that in any way shape or form.

Now, I'm going to assume that they're only talking about personal vehicles being stopped/searched. Looking at DOT's Border Site, I find 1,553,767,018 personal vehicles crossing the border (both Mexico/US and Canada/US) in the same 13 year span (2000-2013). If I assume even distribution (again, this time I know it's not, but this is going to make the math more fair), that's roughly 119,530,540 cars crossing a year.

So assuming that every single seizure listed there is connected to a border crossing, and that all border crossings are treated equally, that would mean absolute worst-case scenario you have approximatley a .004% chance of being subject to this. Realistically, the chance (especially with Canadian crossings) is probably much lower. Once again, I am not trying to claim this is an acceptable thing for any officer or department to do, but given those numbers it doesn't exactly seem like the organized, top-down, directed epidemic that it's being made out to be.

Also, the fact that it's affecting such a miniscule percentage of crossings (again, worst case, 1 in 25k) would totally explain why I've never encountered anyone who has dealt with it despite living a stone's throw from the border and having friends/family on both side that cross semi-regularly.

EDIT: The WaPo article waaaaay down at the bottom actually pulls up that 62k number and says it's since Sept 11, 2001. So if I change my border crossing from 00-13 to October 01-August 14 (the latest info that site has), it changes it to 1,394,216,864 vehs crossing. This changes my percentage slightly -- .004447% instead of .00398%. In the interest of fairness (and boredom because I'm on a double and I actually kinda enjoy running numbers honestly) I decided to update the numbers.